Thursday, June 3, 2010

Homefront: Easy and Inexpensive Ephemera Collage Art

This little art project takes about 15 minutes and costs about $15. It takes up a nice little piece of wall space too. If you were to get 4 canvases and put them in a square shape, it could make a nice headboard as well.

First, I got a pack of 2 stretched canvas for $9.99 and some corsage pins for .87 cents. You need 4 pins per main paper, and one pin for the middle paper. So, 5 pins per piece of canvas.

I had a pack of ephemera I got from dodipc, mixed with some papers I had been collecting. Ephemera is essentially vintage papers, maps, patterns, photographs, text, bookplates, receipts, postcards, love letters, ledger papers, music sheets, flash cards, ticket stubs, advertisements... Very easy to collect at antique malls and packs can be found on Etsy or Ebay. You probably have something right now you could use. Or, visit The Graphics Fairy and print some free vintage images. Try tea staining some current papers for a similar effect, lots of methods explained here.

There is something so romantic about ledger paper. The crisp, black ink, and the nearly perfect fonts of the handwriting transports me to a time when men were gentlemen and took such care in the way records were presented. Each capital letter is curled beautifully, and the words form on the lines in straight perfection.

I didn't paint the canvases, but any craft acrylic paint will do if you wish to paint. If you do, remember to paint the sides of the canvas as well. I was going to tape the ledger paper directly on the canvas, but tape doesn't stick, so I used the corsage pins instead. You could also glue the paper down, but I prefer to change things at random, and have a hard time gluing down certain vintage papers, so I kept it as reversible as possible.

I taped the pins down on the back of the canvas to help keep them in position, though a stronger tape would probably be best. Or, you could always embroider the paper down instead of pin it. I love the elongated pearly tips and angled them to emphasize the corner of the papers. Vintage hat pins would work as well.

This project is so quick and easy, with minimal clean up after wards. The papers you choose is limitless, and they don't have to match perfectly either. You could even use a photograph of your children as the center piece. Or glue the back paper on, and change the front paper depending on the season. You can frame them as well if you want, but I just wanted a quick and simple piece of art for this wall space.